Pacific Sunset
by OwlinAMinor
Summary: The might-have-beens of Luke and Rachel meeting before she throws her famous blue plastic hairbrush at him.  One-shot.  Lukachel  a.k.a. LukexRachel


**PACIFIC SUNSET**

**Lukachel. A pairing I must have created, because I just searched it, and no other fanfics with it exist. Yet I think it's my favorite to come out of the PJatO fandom (and not because I created it). Percabeth is cute, but overdone. Thuke is fun to imagine. NicoxAnybody is getting so old, especially because so many fangirls have paired themselves (or their OCs) up with him. Pairings of the minor characters are always interesting to read, but always mostly imagined. **** Percachel and Lukabeth are too hated to be written at all. **

**I like Lukachel because it combines two characters dissed by the ones they love who paired up without them, a dab of mystery, some mist, and a whole lot of might-have-beens. Because the first time the two meet, Luke is already Kronos, and Rachel hits him in the eye with her famous blue plastic hairbrush.**

**But what if they meet before that? Before Rachel knows anything about the Greek gods, and the fact that they were real? Before she meets Percy?**

**This story explores that idea. I'm not exactly sure when it happens, but I know it's at some point between The Sea of Monsters and The Battle of the Labyrinth, when Kronos is starting to "prepare" Luke to house his spirit, and Luke doesn't like the idea.**

**I don't own Luke and Rachel; Rick Riordan does.**

**Enjoy.**

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Pacific sunsets love to be watched.

It's why they make their reds more red, their oranges more orange, their pinks more pink, their blues more blue, and their purples more purple than any other type of sunset. It's why they linger so long, like parents who insist they take about a million pictures of their child before he or she leaves for prom. It's why they're so unique and creative with their patterns and color combinations, never using the same exact thing twice, like artists creating their life's masterpiece. It's why they bribe the breezes to clear away the clouds, the oceans to accent them with perfectly timed breaking waves and pepper the air with sea spray, and the stars to shine more brightly than usual, like twinkling pinpricks of light penetrating a darkened room. It's why they choose to perform above the highest, bleakest, most wild cliffs that jut out into the ocean _just so_ and give those watching a superb view. It's why they commision artists to paint and photograph them, advertising them in galleries, on the internet, and through postcards sent all over the world.

It's why they're widely considered to be among the most beautiful spectacles on Earth.

Unfortunately, this sunset had an audience of only two.

_All that work for nothing,_ it thought in dismay, finally completely submerging itself in the deep blue-green sea to plan its next performance.

Little did it know that it would bring two wayward travelers together in ways neither of them could forsee.

"Lovely, isn't it?" commented a girl's voice.

Startled as if someone had just walked in on him using the bathroom, the handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed, scarred, mischievous-looking young man turned around, his black Adidas sneakers squeaking on the gravel. To the right of him, illuminated in the growing moonlight as she circulated to face him, stood the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Curly hair redder than flames cascaded down her back. Sad emerald eyes that seemed deeper than the ocean gazed directly into his azure ones, not at all frightened unlike most people who were forced to gaze at him. Freckles danced their way across the bridge of her tiny, crooked nose. Tanned golden skin covered her from head to toe. A lime green tank top and paint-splattered jeans outlined the well-rounded curves that were envied by many of her friends.

For a moment that seemed to last an eternity, the boy felt his heart stop. It then picked up again, so loud and fast that he was embarrassed - she, no doubt, could hear it. In the lingering silence of twilight, when any wildlife the beach may have held during the sun's rule now were snoring in their beds, any and every sound was easily heard.

"Who are you?" she inquired, green eyes cold and calculating like a commander tricking his enemy into surrender.

"It's none of your concern." He turned back to watch the sunset, even though there was nothing to watch, even though he would rather watch her.

"Oh?" Her curiosity was piqued, and her determination wouldn't let it rest until it was satisfied. "That just makes it all the more my concern."

When he still wouldn't answer, she tried again with a different question. "Why are you here, then?"

"To think."

"No," she decided, "One does not hike twenty miles from any road, fifty miles from any human habitation simply to _think_."

He looked at her again, and that was his mistake. For in her eyes, he saw desire, he saw beauty, he saw wisdom, and he saw truth. And though this boy, this man, this commander had lied so many times to people he cared about, he couldn't stop himself now from telling the truth.

"I came here to escape."

What from, he didn't tell her. But she didn't need to now. What she needed to know, what she now knew, was that he was _like her_. He, too, was a fugitive. An outlaw. Someone with freedom. The first she had met who didn't try to fight her, enlist her, or rape her. Taking in his tattered gray t-shirt and jean shorts, the pack on his back, and the scar dominating his face, she decided to trust him. Not with everything - after all, he still wouldn't tell her who he was. But with enough that would make them friends, allies, fellow fighters united in their escape.

"Me too," she said simply.

For the first time, he noticed the tracks by her feet. Tracks the exact same size and shape of her faded brown Nike sneakers. Tracks that led into a grove of tall, leafy palm trees. Tracks that ended inside a dark opening in the dusty orange sandstone that created the cliff.

As any middle-school guidance counselor would tell you, boys insult the girls they like. To test them, to ask "Will you fight back? Are you worthy of me? Or will you be a coward?" This one was about to test the strange red-headed fugitive.

"Well, you're going about it all wrong," he began, his voice taking on a cruel tone colder than the snow on the summit of Mount Everest. "First of all, you don't hide in an out-of-the-way cave where you're obviously out of place; you hid in a big city, where nobody notices you. You have to cover your footprints. Be self-sufficient. Don't let others know where you are. And you always have to be prepared to be found, caught, and thrown back to where you came from."

"If I'm doing it all wrong, then how come you're here too? How come you aren't following your own rules?" She had passed; she was worthy.

"I'm not escaping, not really," was the answer. "He'll find me. He'll make me do what he wants. He'll make me keep my oath. I don't have any freedom, not since I pledged myself to him, and he made me regret it."

The girl was struck by an uncontrollable urge to protect this boy, protect him from the "he" he spoke of, keep him away, keep him safe, keep him with her.

"And one more thing," the boy whispered, so quietly the distant crashing of the waves was louder than his voice. The redhead leaned in closer so she could hear him - close enough that she could smell his breath, of pine and cinnamon and something strangely like blood, see every detail and pulsing vein of his scar, like something alive, almost feel his silky blond hair.

"Wherever you escaped from, whatever you escaped from, you should go back. It may seem horrible to you, but worse can happen out here. Much worse. Whatever you hate, there are things in the world that are worse. And I don't want them to happen to you," he added, breathing the words out and letting a passing breeze carry them to her small elf-like ear.

"Why?" she asked, barely able to breathe, suffocated by his closeness.

"I don't want you to repeat my mistake," was his reply. "You're too lovely," he almost said, or "too clever," or "too wise," or "too truthful" ... but that wasn't it. He just wanted her to live a full, happy life, the kind of life he had never had and yet longed for so much, like a bind man longs to see the sun. He didn't know why. Maybe it was the magic of the sunset. Or perhaps it was simply the magic of her voice, the musical way it soared and dipped and never faltered, the way it entranced him more than the Sirens ever could.

But the girl had another question. "Mistakes like what?"

"Like this." Simultaneously, they leaned in, and simultaneously, their lips pressed together. It wasn't a kiss of fireworks, or of a promise, or of longing, or of spite. It was a kiss of pure beauty. Of loving someone even though you have no idea who they are. Of two hearts melding together.

When they broke apart after what may have been a lifetime, the girl told the boy, "I won't ignore my promises, and I'll go back. But only if you do the same. No matter who you are, where you come from, or how hard it is, if you make a promise, you have to honor it. You can't escape just because it didn't turn out the way you thought it would. So this is a new promise - a promise on that gorgeous Pacific sunset - that we'll stop running from our destinies just because we don't like them."

The boy didn't have to say anything. He nodded, the girl nodded, and they shook hands - an ink-splattered artist's fingers meeting a scarred, muscled warrior's.

They didn't kiss again, or make love underneath the twinkling stars, or anything stupid and romantic like that. Nor did they ever meet again. Though they did see each other again, from a distance, they never talked again, or kissed again. Neither ever learned who the other really was. In a war, they ended up on opposite sides. And both of them eventually came to think of that Pacific sunset as a dream. A beautiful, vivid, glorious, strange dream that must have come from some kind of Heaven, but a dream nonetheless.

Not all love stories have happy endings. Or, for that matter, happy beginnings. Or beginnings at all. All they have is a few pitiful might-have-beens. And a Pacific sunset.

But at that moment, as the boy turned around and marched back the way he came, he prayed for the first time in years to gods he despised. He prayed that the girl would have a good, happy life, full of people who loved and appreciated her. And she did the same for him.

And though an angry, electric, raven-haired girl owned his heart and a wise yet stupid, owl-eyed, blond-haired one directed it, the fiery redhead was the one who guarded it. She never let it get trampled on, or torn apart, or destroyed.

And he did the same for her.

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**Reviews are loved.**


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